If you would like your calls to have absolutely the best sound possible, you should use a SIP provider like onsip.com (we use them) then use HD voice phones from Polycom (the HDTV of phones such as the Polycom 335, $115, or Polycom 550). HD Voice is starting to come out from other manufacturers and is supported by many SIP gateways. The difference between a conversation between two HD Voice phones versus two regular phones is similar to the difference between talking in person versus talking on the phone. Onsip.com provides the following comparison:

To give you an idea of what the difference is, this is what an HD call with a Polycom 650 sounds like, and this is what the standard phone call sounds like.

If you would like the best sound possible from Skype, you can use the following: a Blue microphone, stand and shockmount and to eliminate "pop" a shield.  This is unapologetic uncompromising overkill. 

One thing that seems to be very unique about us is that we really do paired programming. This practice is not for everyone by far. A lot of people don't get it and won't get it. But for those that get it, we are one of the few deep practitioners.  Pivotal Labs, of course, is another one. Just from talking to people from other leading development shops it seems like 90% or more of Ruby on Rails agile companies do not practice it to the extent that we do. Paired = higher quality & lower risk of project interruption.

Learn more about Paired Programming on Wikipedia, including information about research on its effectiveness.

These look like the most interesting Ruby and Agile related conference events in 2010:

• April 9-10, Reston, Virgina. Ruby Nation Ruby conference.  SOLD OUT.
• April 14-15, San Francisco, California. Chirp Twitter Developer Conference ($469).
• April  20-21, New York, NY. #140Conf ($140).
• May 22-23, Krakow, Poland. EuRuKo Ruby conference. For reference, see EuRuKo 2009.
• May 22-23, Gothenberg, Sweden. Nordic Ruby conference ($809 - €600).
• June 7-10, Baltimore, Maryland. RailsConf O'Reilly Ruby on Rails conference ($695).
• August 4-6, (near) Jacksonville, Florida. BizConf. A Hashrocket founded conference ($1,570).

I will come back and update this post over time to keep it fresh.

Here are a few I'm keeping my eye on but haven't really decided if they are interesting yet or not, or they have yet to come up with a 2010 agenda.

• Agile Business Conference
  
• April 14-17, Oxford, UK. Accu 2010 on agile software practices.
• ???? suggestions

Google's Nexus One Android smartphone may be the turning point for Android in its battle for respect from the otherwise iPhone-carrying set of consumers. Or maybe not (see this New York Times article). Released to Google employees about a week ago, the Nexus One was released to the general public on Tuesday January 5th, 2010. We took this opportunity to take some photos.

I was particularly impressed by the camera on the Nexus One and its vivid colour. The image of red lips below is completely unenhanced (colour was removed from the rest of the image to ensure our attention was not distracted).